54 Proceedings of the Boyal Physical Society. 



Mr Knox, speaking of their disappearance and the causes 

 of it, suggests that " martens (which, it is well known, was an 

 abundant species ' during the first half of the present cen- 

 tury ') may have assisted in their extinction ; and the rapid 

 increase of the squirrel during the past thirty years," Mr 

 Knox, writing in 1872, considers, " supports this supposition, 

 martens being now more kept under, and gamekeeping being 

 more general." * 



But while it appears evident enough that the squirrel 

 became extinct on Speyside, it is not quite so clear that it 

 did so in Badenoch and Strathspey. Macgillivray seems to 

 have had some suspicion of their lingering there, and in the 

 valley of the Don in Aberdeenshire ; but it does not appear 

 that he was aware of the introduction at Beaufort in 1844. 

 Writing in 1853, he says, "it occurs even on the Spey;"i" 

 the fact of his not alluding to the introduction almost con- 

 clusively shows that he did not know of it. 



Mr James MacPherson gives me satisfactory evidence of 

 the very early appearance in Strathspey and Badenoch. He 

 has taken much interest in the subject, and been at great 

 pains to obtain for me the most accurate information. He 

 writes as follows : " Malcolm JMacDonald, master mason, 

 aged about seventy, born in the parish of Alvie, and now re- 

 siding on the Belleville estate, says, that he first saw the 

 squirrel at Belleville in 1828 or 1829. Eemembers the occa- 

 sion very well, and is quite sure of the date. An animal, at 

 first supposed to be a polecat, was observed by some of the 

 workpeople in a tree at the mill-dam between Belleville 



reached into Badenoch as far as Kingussie, as may be gathered from the Gaelic 

 origin of the word — Kingussie, i.e., Ceann-quithsach, or "The head or ex- 

 tremity of the Fir- wood " {vide Robertson's "Gaelic Topography," etc., p. 

 405) ; and much information regarding the old Caledonian forest will be found 

 in the notes to " The Lays of the Deer Forest," vol. ii., p. 219, et seq., which 

 it would be well to consult in this connection. 



* Vide "Autumns on the Spey. " Gisborne appears to have been impressed 

 by a similar conviction as regards the wild cat : 



" The tawny wild cat, fiercest of the beasts 

 That roam in Britain's forests, wont on high 

 To seize the rapid squirrel." 



— " Walks in a Forest," p. 48. 

 t Op cit., p. 390. 



